The Problem With the SAT’s Idea of Objectivity
Faced with the messy realities of entrenched privilege, the College Board is trying to find a quantitative solution.
Students taking the SAT will soon be subjected to a new kind of assessment. On top of their math and verbal results, indicating what knowledge they were able to summon internally while taking the exam, they’ll be placed along a scale of adversity: a representation of the external. By calculating students’ social, economic, and family background, the College Board hopes to add new context to students’ test scores. Evaluating students on factors far beyond their control might seem like a novel attempt in leveling the playing field, but in some ways, it actually brings the test closer to its conflicted origins.
The adversity index was 10 colleges in 2017. It consists of meant to approximate the
